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Quebec election campaign unfolding in Stephen Harper’s favour: Hébert

When all is said and done there are so far more good than bad omens for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in the entrails of the Quebec election campaign.

PQ Leader Pauline Marois, pictured here with candidate Jean Poirier in Laval on Monday, has been campaigning on a conservative-friendly platform. So has her top competitor, the Liberals. (Ryan Remiorz / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

On the sovereignty front, polls suggest that there is more smoke than fire to the notion of a third Quebec referendum. At this juncture, Marois’ campaign is at risk of choking on the smoke that its own sovereigntist rhetoric has generated.

And then, for all of Quebec’s reputation as a progressive heartland, and in spite of its embrace of the NDP in the last federal election, this campaign is essentially playing out on conservative-friendly themes.

That starts with the two star recruits of the campaign: media mogul Pierre Karl Péladeau for the Parti Québécois and Gaétan Barrette for the Liberals.

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Each would play a leading role in a government made up by his party and each would bring to the table views that are more mainstream within federal Conservative circles than they have traditionally been in Quebec.

PKP has taken on more unions than almost any other Canadian captain of industry, locking out his own employees on more than a dozen occasions.

As president of the province’s medical specialists association and as a 2012 candidate for the Coalition Avenir Québec, Barette has been an advocate of a greater private sector role in health care.

But the tilt to the right goes beyond a handful of personalities.

On the economy: In government after April 7 the Liberals and the PQ would similarly pursue an austerity agenda. That reflects their common desire to woo support away from the right-leaning Coalition Avenir Québec in this campaign, but also the significant influence of ratings agencies on government budgets.

The PQ — even as it craves a winning referendum — has found since its arrival in government that it cannot ignore the markets that finance the province’s debt.

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On energy: After two PQ years the province’s policies are more and not less in line with the Conservative agenda.

Under the PQ, the Quebec government has taken a stake in oil exploration on island of Anticosti. It has softened its rhetoric on the development of a more comprehensive Canadian pipeline network.

Under either a re-elected PQ government or a Liberal one, Quebec would keep the door open to a west-to-east pipeline to link the Alberta oilsands to the refineries of eastern Canada and essentially insist on the same environmental safeguards.

Trade: When Marois came to power there were predictions that her victory spelled doom for Harper’s trade initiative with the European Union. That did not come to pass. A more recent trade agreement with South Korea did not elicit a peep on the Quebec campaign trail. As opposed to Ontario, Quebec is no longer deeply invested in the automobile industry.

Senate reform: Unless the Supreme Court surprises the legal community by ruling that the upper house can be significantly transformed without substantial provincial support and a constitutional amendment, wholesale reform is not on the books.

No Quebec government — be it Liberal or PQ — will come to the constitutional table to discuss the Senate unless Quebec’s long-standing constitutional to-do list is also on the agenda.

Even if provincial unanimity were not required under the Constitution, federal legislation adopted under Jean Chrétien dictates that Quebec give its approval to any amendment before Parliament can enact it.

That has to be a concern for the NDP as it could make its commitment to a national referendum on abolishing the Senate and, presumably, to constitutional negotiations to enact the result, suspect in the province.

A wide-ranging constitutional round that encompasses the Quebec demands list is as much of a non-starter in the rest of Canada as a stand-alone round on the Senate is in Quebec.

Finally if the ongoing decline in support for the CAQ translates into serious losses on voting day, the result could make a run in federal politics more attractive to some of its leading members than a marginal life in the national assembly or outside of politics altogether.

On the morning after April 7, Harper may have his best shot at assembling a solid Quebec team in a decade.

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